Week Three Blog

Lecture: From this weeks lecture we learn't that Online Libraries and Databases will be vital in our success at university as they posses alot of information that can be accessed 24/7 from any location around the world. We were also told about copyright issues involving online journals etc as they have to be referenced properly or plagiarism can come into play. There is often information and guide lines on each site to there copyright laws but often it comes down to the individual to make sure they are abiding by the copyright laws

There are Five main types of online libraries, these are:

• Online Journals

• Online text repositories

• Electronic books

• Musical

• Artwork

Although mostly positive, there are certain disadvantages when it comes to online Libraries and databases:

• To be able to gain access to the text's you often have to subscribe and therefore it isn't accessible by the general public

• Indexes are often not available to specific information on what you are searching is required

• Databases will often contain alot of spam/advertising making it difficult to navigate

Although Online Libraries and databases are classified differently they are basically identical sharing the same pros and cons as well as sharing the same goal, to offer the individual as much information as possible.

Workshop: In this week's Tutorial we had to complete a variety of tasks involving locating information on the "impact of global warming on business" using the online library as well visiting the MEDline website and from there looking into a particular condition or drug.

Task 1:

Step 1: Go to http://www.ecu.edu.au/library/ and familerise yourself with the website


Step 2: Click on the hyper link "journal articles (databases)"


Step 3: Next click on the hyper link "Find databases by title" which will open a new tab


Step 4: From here find the link ABI/Inform Global and click on it


Step 5: This will bring you to a page were you can specify your search to the smallest detail


Step 6: Under "limit results to:" check both boxes and then define your search how you wish


Step 7: A list of the results will then come and you are able to choose which you would like to view
Ten useful search tips:

• Use quotations whenever searching exact phrases.

• * can be used if you want to search multiple things based around the same word, for example racis* will search racism, racist etc.

• ? can be used to replace any character within a word, for example m?n well search man and men.

• "Or" will search both words, for example soccer or football.

• W/#, when searching more than one word and you want them to be within a certain number of words of each other use W/#, for example computer W/2 careers.
  

• When looking for the appendix of a certain document use APX(searching term)

• When looking for an abstract, use ABS(searching term)

• If you want to find articles written by a specific author put AU and then the authors name in brackets.

• If you want to find publications between a certain date put PDN(mm/dd/yyyy)

• If you want to change or see what language the document was originally published in type, type LA(language you want to view the document in) in the search box

Task 2:

Our second task required us to visit http://medlineplus.gov/

From there we had to find a condition that interested us and use the built in search engine to help us better our understanding of the condition. This site provided very in depth information for the viewer and many people interested in medicine would find the site very interesting as well as people with injuries wanting to find out more or others doing research on a certain condition.

Extra reading:

"Finding what you want on the web"

This article explored the idea of using different search engines instead of always referring to Google and yahoo etc. Although he spent a few weeks researching and finding alternatives he found that engines such as Google and yahoo will remain dominant until the world wide web changes for the better. People think that searching something in Google and clicking on the top link is acceptable, however it isn't as there are a wide variety of sources such on online journals etc available which people never even consider.

"Bare bones lesson 7: Basic search tips"

The second article was based around helpful tips when using search engines, it showed certain symbols which help to better our search terms. Things such as the "+" and "-" symbols allow us to force certain words to be looked at or in the opposite case not to be looked at. It also told us to make sure we know the basics of the search engine we use, for example does it maintain stop word lists etc.